23. Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three

The champion of the underdog had one last stop to make.

"I don't get why we can't just leave a message," Paige said, leaning back in the passenger seat of the sleek Lexus rental car with her bare feet up on the dashboard, legs crossed, a silver bangle winking from one ankle. She'd traded her wrap skirt for a pair of jeans and bundled herself up in one of Nell's new sweaters, but she hadn't thought to bring a jacket, and she reached sideways to crank up the heat.

Nell shifted the car into the left lane as her GPS alerted her of an upcoming turn. "Because I want it done right, and since I still haven't decided if I'm speaking to you, you have to do what I say."

"You're speaking to me right now."

"You're on probation pending final judgment."

"I said I was sorry."

"And now you get to prove it."

Nell flicked a glance in her rearview. The snow that had fallen overnight had turned to a layer of grimy slush on the streets, spattering tires and making the Chevy behind her fishtail briefly as it pulled into a nearby gas station. Behind that, the road was clear. She wasn't exactly on the lookout for a silver Maserati—even if Whit had decided to drive into town, he wouldn't know what Paige's rental car looked like—but after she'd run off without so much as a goodbye, the fact that she hadn't made a quick exit from Fallen Oaks left her uneasy. What if she ran into Skip? Or Bucky? She had no idea if Allie and Freddie were still in town, but Nell's status as Whit's (supposed) girlfriend meant there were plenty of other people she'd prefer to avoid. And that meant she needed to get this done, and fast.

No matter how angry Whit would be when he found out.

With a quick check to make certain the intersection was clear, she made her turn, then slowed the Lexus as the GPS informed her the destination would be on her right. She could see it already, a squat brick building with an arched entranceway flanked by flagpoles. The Fallen Oaks Police Department shared the space with city hall, but thanks to the early hour—and the government offices being closed for the weekend—the small lot was mostly empty. Nell parked, then sat for a moment clutching the steering wheel, staring at the building ahead of her.

This was a terrible idea. Worse than terrible. Phenomenally, fantastically bad. Not to mention poorly thought out. What if he wasn't even there? He could be off duty. Or out on patrol. How many officers could a town the size of Fallen Oaks have, anyway? A dozen? Half a dozen? Odds were good this whole escapade would turn out to be pointless, and Nell's foolhardy, half-baked plan—concocted while waiting for Paige at the end of Bucky's driveway—would be nothing more than a big waste of time. But her luck held. When Nell finally summoned the courage to head into the station, the fresh-faced twenty-year-old behind the reception desk was so dazzled by Paige's bright smile, he ushered them straight to the small, cluttered alcove where Sawyer Brewster sat brooding behind a desk.

No turning back now , Nell thought.

Paige's gaze had already zeroed in on him. "Please tell me we're here to talk to Officer Hottie."

"Can you at least attempt to not be totally embarrassing for the next twenty minutes or so?" Nell groaned.

The answer to that question was apparently no. As soon as they approached Sawyer, Paige went into full-on flirt mode. She fluffed her hair, moistened her lips, and when they reached his desk, she held out her arms, wrists together, hands hanging limp. "Arrest me, Officer. I've been bad."

"Do you want to go wait in the car?" Nell hissed.

Sawyer ignored Paige entirely. His eyes were fixed on Nell, his expression wary. "Can I help you, Ms. McLean? If this is about the complaints…"

"It isn't. I'm here to talk about Whit's stalker."

"Supposed stalker," Sawyer replied, not even attempting to keep the derision from his voice.

"Someone has been taking pictures of us."

Sawyer leaned back in his chair, his hands tucked behind his head. "He's a professional athlete. People take pictures of him all the time."

"On private property? Through a window?" Nell had skimmed through the photos Paige had been sent, and while none of them were particularly intimate, the thought of someone spying on her and Whit made her skin crawl. That wasn't the behavior of an overly-invested fan, and neither was the vandalism to Whit's car. It was behavior rooted in obsession, and Nell wasn't leaving town until she knew someone was treating it seriously. She grabbed Paige's phone and thrust it at Sawyer.

His expression turned sober as he looked at the photos, but when he asked Nell if she had any suspects, she was forced to admit she didn't. That meant the best he could do was take a statement, log the photos into evidence, and advise her to be on the alert for any further incidents—unnecessary, since she would be gone within the hour, a piece of information she kept to herself. Anyway, that was only part of the reason she'd come.

The other reason was a bit of none-of-her-business meddling that Whit would probably never forgive.

Good thing she'd already dumped him.

She pressed her fingertips to the edge of the desk, using the cool, polished surface to steady herself. She didn't know much about Sawyer Brewster, and what she did know wasn't particularly favorable. He seemed to her a spiteful, angry man with too much resentment and too little compassion. But he'd once been the closest thing Whit had to a brother, and that had to count for something.

Please let it count for something . "You need to talk to Whit," she said softly.

Irritation pinched at Sawyer's lips. "Someone will head out to take his statement in a couple of days."

Whit would be back in Minneapolis in a couple of days. Nell shook her head. "No. Y ou need to talk to him."

Ice-blue eyes burned back at her. "Look, lady—"

"I won't pretend to know everything that went on between the two of you," she began, letting the words rush out before her common sense could kick in and stop her. "But I know that what happened twelve years ago wasn't Whit's fault. And I think you know that, too."

Sawyer's irritation turned to full-blown hostility. His palm came down hard on his desk, making the stack of papers in front of him bounce. "You don't know a damn thing."

Paige touched her arm. "Maybe we should go."

Nell shrugged her off. "He wasn't driving drunk that night. His mom was behind the wheel, and he took the fall for her. That's why he was kicked off the team. He got punished for something he never did, and he was too stubborn to tell you and James. He's guilty of being an idiot, but that's all."

"That and a slight bit of arson," Sawyer said with a sneer. "Or didn't he tell you that part?"

"He already hates himself for that more than you ever could."

There was nothing more she could say. Sawyer would either believe her or he wouldn't; he would make peace with Whit or he wouldn't. But twelve years was a long time to carry around so much animosity, especially for someone you used to love. Maybe he was looking for a little forgiveness, too.

She felt lighter as she left the station. Not happy—it would be a long time before she found her way back to that—but lighter. The cool, pine-scented air that brushed against her brought to mind the thick winds rolling off Lake Michigan. She closed her eyes and breathed .

"You might have given me some warning," Paige said as they headed to the car. "For a minute there, I thought he really was going to arrest us."

"I bet Grandmother would've just loved that. Though I suppose you could've always said you did it for her, so she wouldn't be the first Forrester to land behind bars."

Paige made a face. "That isn't funny."

"And speaking of Grandmother…" Nell let out a shaky exhale. "You need to work with Whit's publicist."

This time she scowled. "When hell freezes over."

"You screwed up, Paige. You were supposed to have my back, and you didn't. You want to make it up to me? This is how you do it."

There was a bit of muttering, followed by a sigh of resignation. "All right, fine. If she contacts me again, I'll listen."

She would, Nell knew. Whit would make sure of it.

A moment of silence ticked past, then Paige reached over and gave Nell's shoulder a squeeze. "You're going to be okay, sweetie."

"Yeah."

She slid into the car, turned the ignition, put it in drive. A few minutes later they were on the highway, Fallen Oaks vanishing behind them.

***

Whit didn't leave Fallen Oaks on Saturday. He didn't leave Sunday, either. Or Monday. By the time the following Saturday rolled around, Bucky had given up asking him how long he was planning to stay.

Which was good, because Whit didn't have a clue how to answer that question. If he had been following any sort of plan, he'd have left for Minneapolis directly after the charity gala. Instead, he was still sleeping in his grandfather's guest room, still driving his dad's Maserati, still dutifully mucking out the barn every morning and confiscating any cigarettes he found lying around the house. He'd also added a workout routine into the schedule and bullied Bucky into letting him paint the porch. Since that wasn't enough to occupy him, he'd considered starting a new throwing program—but Bucky would've tossed him out on his ass the second he saw a baseball, so Whit decided any adjustments to his arsenal could wait.

"Don't know why you want to hang out with me anyway," Bucky told him, after threatening to make Whit detail his pickup failed to dislodge him.

"You're pushing ninety," Whit said. "I figure I should spend as much time with you as I can before you keel over."

"I just turned eighty, smartass. And my mother lived to be a hundred."

"Which is about a hundred years younger than that pickup. It doesn't need detailing. It needs a metal compactor."

"Go do your moping in the barn," Bucky huffed. "It depresses me to look at you."

Whit wasn't moping. He was taking a breather. A perfectly normal response to the recent upheaval in his life, only part of which was due to the infuriating woman he couldn't seem to purge from his thoughts. He wasn't dejected, despairing, or whatever other adjective Allie wanted to fling at him. Which was exactly what he told her when she called to demand what the hell he was still doing there.

"You hate Fallen Oaks even more than I do," she hissed over the phone line. She and Freddie had left town the night she'd learned about Maggie, and since Allie's preferred method of demonstrating displeasure involved spending as much of Skip's money as possible, as quickly as possible, she was currently enjoying the nightlife in Singapore—which she intended to follow up with two weeks in Hong Kong and a month in Australia.

"I'm just taking a little time to clear my head."

"You're not the first guy to ever get dumped, you know," she said.

"Nell didn't dump me. We were never actually dating."

"Mm-hmm. Just taking a guess here, but… when was the last time you shaved? Or showered?"

"I don't know. What does that have to do anything? "

"You're holed up in a farmhouse at the ass end of nowhere and have abandoned personal hygiene. You got dumped."

"At least I haven't peed on any statues."

Allie hung up on him.

Okay, so maybe he was moping a little. But after discovering he had another sister, learning his father had doped, and being not-exactly-dumped by the woman who had begun to occupy his every waking moment, he figured he deserved a good mope.

On the other hand, he was sort of starting to resemble a caveman—or at least some kind of paranoid off-the-grid survivalist who lived in the woods and slept with a gun—so he shaved off the beard he'd been haphazardly growing and made a point of washing his hair.

He finally got Rory on the phone, and it felt good to have someone to yell at, but after he went into a tirade about the stupidity of keeping important family secrets from siblings, she hung up on him, too.

Rebecca called to let him know Paige had agreed to work with her, which surprised him. He ended that call before he could humiliate himself by grilling her for information she couldn't possibly know.

He heard nothing from Nell.

Not that he wanted to. Every time he thought about her, he felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his chest. What had she expected him to do? Beg? Get down on one knee and propose? They'd been together a fucking week! Less than that, if you took into account they'd spent the first couple of days arguing. She knew he didn't do long-term relationships. She knew why. He'd told her about his parents' train wreck of a marriage and the endless misery that had come as a result. And even after all of that, he'd offered to come with her so they could take time to figure things out. Instead, she'd chosen to run out on him, sneaking away while he was in the shower like she was fleeing a hotel after a cheap one-night stand. All that talk about how she couldn't do casual, about how desperately in love with him she was, and she'd walked away without a second glance.

It pissed him off that he missed her. The way she tilted her head back when she laughed… that sly smile she sometimes got. He missed talking with her. He missed how perfectly she fit in his arms. He fell asleep remembering the scent of her skin and woke with his body aching for her. She flitted through his dreams, tempting, teasing. Even her voice seemed to haunt him.

He would get over it eventually. He'd have to. It had taken Nell a week to turn his world upside down, it couldn't take much longer than that to get himself back to normal. By the time spring training rolled around, she'd be a distant memory, an object lesson in becoming involved with someone who made him feel too much.

He just wished the getting over it part would hurry the fuck up.

"Now who's having a pity party?" his dad asked when he stopped by the farm and found Whit attempting to keep himself busy by painting the barn.

Whit tossed a roller toward him. "You can get to work or you can get lost. Those are your options."

Skip grabbed the roller. "From what your grandfather says, you're gonna run out of things to paint."

The cool weather that had brought with it the season's first snowfall hadn't lasted, and the late autumn sun beat down on them, thick and hot. "The house needs to be reshingled," Whit grunted, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Since when do you know how to shingle a roof?"

"Since the invention of YouTube."

"And what happens when you break that million-dollar arm of yours?"

"It's worth a hell of a lot more than that," Whit retorted. "And I'm not going to break it."

Skip rubbed the back of his neck, sending Whit a sidelong glance. "I didn't do the interview," he said gruffly. "If that's what this whole thing is about."

Whit had figured that much out by now. Instead of a shocking tell-all that exposed the darkest secrets of one of baseball's most respected figures, Jerry Garwood had published an in-depth feature on the struggles of Bellamy Swan.

It should have relieved him. His father's legacy was safe. There would be no blistering condemnations or sordid scandals, no intrusive articles dredging up the past. No one would use a youthful mistake to call into question whether Skip O'Rourke really belonged in the Hall. Skip's penance would be his silence, and even if neither of them said it, Whit knew his father had done it for him.

But somehow he just felt… numb. "I suppose you want a thank you."

Skip sighed. "And if that's not what this is about…" He shifted uncomfortably. Cleared his throat. "Have you considered just giving her a call?"

Every minute since she'd left. Whit turned away. "If there's one person I won't ever be taking relationship advice from, Dad, it's you."

"Fair enough."

It wasn't until the following day that Whit realized his dad had moved in with them. He went to bed early and woke to find Skip had installed himself on the sofa, deposited a duffel bag of workout clothes in the hall closet, and set up a makeshift office in the laundry room. A couple of Bucky's cats were already making themselves comfortable in his lap. Whit just stared in disbelief.

"Quit lurking, kid," Skip called from the couch. "I can hear your teeth grinding from all the way over here."

Whit stalked into the living room scowling. "You're kidding me, right? You live like ten minutes away."

"Misery loves company." Skip flopped back against the cushions, dislodging one of the cats as he propped his feet on the rickety coffee table in front of him. "You're stuck with me." Apparently Maggie was still refusing all contact, and both Rory and Allie were dodging Skip's calls, so he had decided to—in his words—strengthen his bond with the one kid who didn't totally hate him.

Whit told him to stop reading self-help books.

Three generations of O'Rourke men living under one roof. It was a recipe for disaster. Or at least a lot of yelling.

"The two of you are pathetic," Bucky said in disgust after Skip announced plans to redo the kitchen cabinets. "If either one of you tries to fix one more thing on this farm, I'm giving you both the boot."

"You won't let us play baseball," Skip protested. "What else are we supposed to do? "

"You're both richer than god. Buy yourselves an island if you need somewhere to brood."

But he didn't kick them out. One week slid into two. A cold front brought with it a fresh fall of snow, and this time the sun didn't burn it away. The temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and in every direction, the ground vanished beneath layers of silver and white, signaling the end of autumn and the beginning of the long, frigid winter ahead of them. Whit finished one coat of paint on the barn and started a second. Gerda materialized, insisting on cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and took over Bucky's kitchen. Bucky muttered to himself and tried to oust them by flooding the house with Christmas music.

Then, thirteen days after Nell had returned to Chicago, Whit got a call from the police.

He knew even before he answered whose voice would be on the other end of the line. "What do you want, Brewster?"

Sawyer was all business. "I need you to come down to the station."

"Funny. I didn't think legalizing weed meant you got to smoke on the job."

"Your choice, of course," Sawyer drawled. "But there's someone here you might want to have a chat with. Your stalker just turned herself in."